Old Time Radio

[Redline]

http://www.archive.org/details/audio

Old radiocasts that fell into the public domain saved and rebroadcast on the internet. A lot of old radio plays from the 1930s and the like are archived there.

The one which caught my eye was the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast.

The War of the Worlds was an episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on October 30, 1938 and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds.

The first two thirds of the 60-minute broadcast was presented as a series of simulated news bulletins, which suggested to many listeners that an actual Martian invasion was in progress. Compounding the issue was the fact that the Mercury Theatre on the Air was a 'sustaining show' (i.e., it ran without commercial breaks), thus adding to the dramatic effect. Although there were sensationalist accounts in the press about a supposed panic in response to the broadcast, the precise extent of listener response has been debated. In the days following the adaptation, however, there was widespread outrage. The program's news-bulletin format was decried as cruelly deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast, but the episode launched Orson Welles to fame.

I've got the dvd of the new stage production of it, which is awesome, and I always liked the soundtrack.

Anyone else heard the soundtrack (it was released as a double vinyl, then a double CD) or seen the stage production or dvd?

 

[marinermick]

i have the double vinyl and crank it out every now and again - just awesome

"the chances of anyone coming from mars are a million to one they said, but still they come"

 

[T]

i have the double vinyl and crank it out every now and again - just awesome

"the chances of anyone coming from mars are a million to one they said, but still they come"

Have the sound track on CD, drag it out on long drives sometimes